Haringey Council spent £2.2 million on public relations in the year that Baby P was failed by its struggling social services department, its annual accounts show.

The budget included £337,000 for a monthly magazine distributed to homes in the borough which trumpets the council's achievements – the equivalent of the salaries of 10 social workers.

The council has also spent thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money on "additional press and media support" since the death of Baby P, which is understood to have included media training for some of its senior staff to help them defend their actions in the Baby P case during TV and radio interviews.

Tim Loughton, the shadow children's minister, accused Haringey of having a "warped sense of priorities" while the local LibDem MP, Lynne Featherstone, described the amount of money spent on PR as "extraordinary".

Haringey Council's annual accounts for 2007-08 show that it spent a total of £3,405,000 on "publicity", of which £1,195,000 was for job advertisements, leaving just over £2.2 million which it spent on "communications and other expenditure".

The council's press office accounted for £658,000 of that money – a 34 per cent increase on the previous year – while another £337,000 was spent on Haringey People, the monthly magazine with promotes the council's work.

So far the council has refused to disclose how much it has spent on extra PR advice since Baby P's death, saying only that it has spent money on "additional press and media support" and that the Baby P case had incurred costs of £330,000 by mid-September, mainly spent on legal fees.

Mr Loughton said: "This shows a warped sense of priorities from Haringey Council, where they rush to spend thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money covering their own backs – money which would have been better spent bolstering the work of social workers at the sharp end and make sure that those children still in the care of Haringey Council are rather better protected than Baby P proved to be."

She said of the latest PR budget: "It's an extraordinary way to spend such money, which could be better spent on children's services."

Maria Ward, the social worker assigned to Baby P's case, was allegedly overloaded with 18 separate cases, when Haringey's own rules state that the maximum should be 12. Its social workers were overstretched because 24 per cent of social worker posts in the borough remained vacant.